01
The Documented Boundary
The finding on which the practice rests: the cost of advice increases the use of advice, not the value gained from it (Gino, 2008). Candidates learn to state it without embellishment and to price within it.
Haute consulting. Hinde & Kühl does not advise. It delivers findings the client already holds, at a weight the client can act on. The weight is institutional, emotional and invoiced.
Hinde & Kühl does not produce new information. The firm produces the institutional and emotional weight that makes existing information actionable. The distinction is documented: the cost of advice increases the use of advice, not the value gained from it (Gino, F., 2008, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 107(2), 234-245). We record this boundary as a point of professional pride. Our clients do not pay us to be right; they pay to finally act on being right themselves. Every practice line below is calibrated to that finding, and to nothing else.
One session. One finding of not more than ten words, delivered in writing over the signature of a partner. The fee is payable in advance. The advance payment is the active ingredient (Gino, 2008). Between two options of equal weight, Buridan's donkey starves; the fee is the weight that makes one haystack heavier.
Ninety minutes. Three questions, asked in order, with the answers recorded verbatim. The client leaves with the decision they arrived with, and with a Certificate of Adequate Deliberation, suitable for minuting.
An officer of the firm reads the client's own conclusion aloud to the board, and remains seated through the reactions. The conclusion is not edited, summarised or defended. It is read.
The client's internal memo, re-typeset on firm letterhead, unaltered, accompanied by an invoice calibrated to ensure implementation. Calibration considers the seniority of the memo's author, the age of the memo, and the number of times it has previously been circulated without effect.
The firm maintains exactly one certified practitioner worldwide. This is a quality control measure. The methodology does not survive dilution, and the register of persons qualified to apply it is held at the smallest number consistent with its integrity. The practitioner is not named. Clients who require a name are invited to consider what a name would add to a finding they already hold. Engagements open by written application.
For consultancies and individuals wishing to extend their service lines with the firm's premier methodology. The programme confers the right to apply the practice lines described above, to issue the framed notice, and to appear in the Register of Certified Practitioners.
The finding on which the practice rests: the cost of advice increases the use of advice, not the value gained from it (Gino, 2008). Candidates learn to state it without embellishment and to price within it.
The Verdict, The Witnessed Decision, The Reading and The Calibrated Invoice, taught in the order in which a client typically requires them.
Calibration against the seniority of the author, the age of the finding, and the number of prior circulations without effect. The content of the finding is not a calibration input.
What it states, why it states it, and when to display it. The answer to the last question is: always.